On-chip machinery control can be obtained either directly, through a JTAG adapter dongle, or through a network proxy, talking either the TAPCLIENT or RTLJTAG protocol.

Common-db itself can serve as a GDB remote target, by exposing its functionality through the GDB RSP protocol. Alternatively, it can expose the directly-attached JTAG target through its own TAPCLIENT protocol.

Common-db is designed to be capable to drive targets of different architecture, although only MIPS32 target is implemented.